The USS Clarence E. Walsh (CG-80) was a U.S. Navy warship and, upon its commissioning in 2007, it was commanded by Captain Arthur Partridge. It was equipped with the most advanced equipment specializing in information warfare. The USS Walsh was destroyed by a North Korean "Super" Silkworm anti-ship missile (Mason referred it as a 30-year old Chinese anti-ship missile) while on a routine patrol in the Sea of Japan on July 4th, 2007.

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The USS Walsh was a highly advanced warship about the size of a frigate or a destroyer. It cost about $80 billion to build as it was specialized in information warfare. The USS Walsh was equipped with the most advanced equipment specialized for this purpose. It also sported a number of anti-missile launchers, warning systems and jamming systems.

The USS Clarence E. Walsh was first deployed in June 2007 amidst growing tensions in Far East Asia. The United States was defending Japan's creation of an Information Self-Defense Force from China and North Korea, who opposed Japan's actions. The USS Walsh was deployed to the Yellow Sea by Secretary of Defense Frank Mason in order to convince China and North Korea to cease harassing Japanese cargo vessels.

Prior to its mission in the Yellow Sea, the ship was present off the coast of Peru, where its crew assisted Third Echelon's Splinter Cell operative Sam Fisher in infiltrating a guerrilla camp owned by the "People's Voice", a group holding American computer engineer Bruce Morgenholt hostage. They provided him with a Zodiac for insertion and extracted him by Seahawk once the mission was completed. It later assisted in the infiltration of the Maria Narcissa when Fisher was sent to assassinate guerrilla leader Hugo Lacerda. The USS Walsh also sent Fisher into Panama City to rob MCAS Banco de Panama to find out more about their financial support for Lacerda. The ship then began its intended deployment in Far East Asia.

The USS Walsh was destroyed by a North Korean Super Silkworm anti-ship missile.

The USS Walsh soon began its mission in the Yellow Sea without much interference. However, while the crew was celebrating Independence Day on July 4, a North Korean "Super" Silkworm anti-ship missile hit and destroyed the ship at 0815 hrs (8:15 a.m.), killing the entire crew. It was later confirmed that at least 141 crew members were dead including Captain Partridge. The USS Walsh was unable to shoot down the missile because she was crippled by an electronic warfare attack, disabling her anti-missile systems. This act of terror ignited a massive political crisis in East Asia, pushing the nations in the region to the brink of war. China supported the claim that North Korea fired the missile unintentionally. American and South Korean forces on the Korean peninsula built up their forces along the 38th Parallel, as North Korea threatened to retaliate by attacking South Korea with a force of over 200,000 soldiers.

It was soon discovered afterwards by Third Echelon that the Masse Kernels had been used to cripple the USS Walsh as a means of heightening tensions in the region. It had been determined that Displace International, an Private Military Corporation, had forced computer programmer Abrahim Zherkezhi to use the Masse Kernels against the warship. Sam Fisher was sent to Displace's mountain retreat in Hokkaido, Japan, to arrest Zherkezhi, only to witness his murder at the hands of Displace CEO Douglas Shetland, who turned out to be the mastermind of the whole plot. With Zherkezhi dead, Fisher was immediately deployed into North Korea to determine if the missile had been launched intentionally. It was soon discovered that the missile had been force-launched by means of the Masse Kernels against the will of North Korea, but this evidence was not presented in time as North Korea launched an all-out invasion against South Korea.

Within 48 hours of the invasion, the South Korean capital of Seoul fell to the North Koreans, leading to the deaths of thousands of servicemen on both sides of the conflict, although 90% of the casualties are on North Korean side, the U.S. and South Korea struggled to hold the line. The invasion was eventually repelled, at the cost of widespread death and infrastructural damage to the South. Third Echelon traced the IW attack on the North Korean missile battery to Tokyo, where Shetland was due to meet with his partners in the conspiracy. It was discovered that Shetland was in fact partners with the Japanese I-SDF, and they had engineered the conflict as an excuse for Japan to remilitarize while Displace profiteered off the war. After a failed exchange of the Masse Kernels, the two turned on each other and the melee ultimately resulted in the death of Shetland at the hands of Sam Fisher. With Displace out of the picture, he moved on to the I-SDF and captured Admiral Toshiro Otomo, the head of the I-SDF who threatened to launch a North Korean missile at Japan if the government did not comply with his demands for remilitarization. The threat was swiftly eliminated and Otomo himself was charged with war crimes at the Hague.

Once the full extent of the conspiracy was made public, the U.S. and Japan restored ties with China and North Korea, with the North agreed to surrender control of occupied South Korea. The dead 141 sailors from the USS Walsh were later sent home and buried with full honors, and the USS Walsh incident came to a final, peaceful resolution.

The USS Walsh also appears in the introductory sequence of the PlayStation 2 version of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 2. In this version of the game, the sinking of the Walsh prompts the U.S. government to deploy Ghost Recon to North Korea to cripple their offensive capabilities along the 38th Parallel.

Clarence E. Walsh is not a real individual outside of the Tom Clancy universe. What significance he held in American history in the universe of the games is not clarified.

The "USS" acronym stands for "United States Ship", used for commissioned US ships (including submarines).

The USS Walsh was thought to be the pinnacle of defense against Information Warfare for the United States of America and was destroyed on July 4th, Independence Day, an important US holiday.